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nobodycareswhatihavetosay · 6 years

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Sierra Burgess is a Problem

Fat girls deserve to feel desired. It’s just that simple.

They shouldn’t feel like they have to lie to get somebody’s attention. They shouldn’t assume that they can’t talk to someone because they look a certain way. They shouldn’t have to fight tooth-and-nail to get a story that realistically represents them.

Last night, I watched the movie Sierra Burgess is a Loser. The gist of the plot is that a young fat girl, Sierra, through a phone number misunderstanding, starts a cyber relationship with a typical-hot and socially awkward quarterback, Jamey, because he thinks he’s flirting with the typical-hot head cheerleader, Veronica. The more Sierra and Jamey talk, the more they realize they really like each other, even though Jamey still doesn’t know he’s talking to the just-your-average/doesn’t-care-about-her-looks fat girl. When the whole scheme is revealed to Jamey, at first he’s upset with Sierra, but then her new best friend, Veronica (long story), convinces him that he should give her another shot. They end up going to homecoming together, and presumably living happily ever after.

Cute, right?

Actually, no. It’s not cute. It might seem like it because, in the end, the awkward Prince Charming falls for the fat Cinderella and goes to the ball with her. But let’s take a look at all the horrible things that lead up to this happy ending.

1) Sierra cat-phishes Jamey. Plain and simple. This is even directly pointed out to her by her other best friend, Dan, and she brushes it aside.

Dan:...an insane plan to text somebody that doesn’t even know you? There’s a word for that. Cat-phishing. And I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.

Sierra: Law is woefully behind technology, so I don’t know if that’s true.

tHaT’S NoT aN ExCuSe?? The law is not the end-all be-all determining factor for figuring out how to treat another human being??? It’s also not illegal to show up and participate in a Nazi-sympathizer rally, but that doesn’t mean you should do it!

(Can we also stop romanticizing cat-phishing for young audiences please? It’s the the Ryder-Unique debacle from Glee all over again. It’s not cute, it’s manipulative.)

2) Jamey admits that cat-phishing was the right call.

Jamey: “Honestly, had we not met the way that we had...maybe I wouldn’t have noticed you.”

Are you fucking kidding me? Why is this the standard we’re setting? In one line, you have not only verified that a fat girl has to cat-phish a guy in order to get his attention, but you’ve reinforced this idea that she should. Because what I hear in that is: “That horrible thing you did? It led to this wonderful outcome! Why should women learn to love themselves and demand attention when they can con it out of another person?”

We don’t need more narratives about guys “discovering” a fat girl’s inner beauty. We need stories that promote a fat girl’s outer beauty. There’s a quote from the movie Ten Inch Hero that I think sums up this sentiment pretty well. The extroverted character Tish is talking to the shy character Jen about Jen’s love life:

Jen: Girls that look like you don't understand. Y'know, I always think, like, if I lost ten pounds, or wore better clothes, or got new boobs that it would make a difference, but I know the truth.

Tish: I'm sorry, but that's bullshit. You're the smartest person that I know. And I see you helping those homeless guys that no one can even look at. You make everyone around you happy. You have so much to offer. To say you don't because of how you look is just... is just total bullshit.

Jen: I didn't say I don't have a lot to offer, I said that people will never know because they don't SEE me. How many proms did you miss because no one asked you? How many times have your friends left you sitting alone at a club while they went and danced with guys? Or how many times has a customer completely ignored you to get a better look at me? So until that happens, until you're told time and time again that your place in life is in the background, don't tell me it's bullshit, because you don't know.

This is the root of the problem. It’s not that fat girls think they don’t have a lot to offer, it’s that they are told that they have to manipulate a guy in order to be noticed. The reason Sierra cat-phishes Jamey is because she hasn’t had enough role models to suggest that she is beautiful enough to just talk to him.

3) Jamey keeps changing his message.

Jamey: “You’re not exactly everybody’s type...but...you’re my type.”

Oh thank god the beautiful quarterback recognizes the fat girl’s potential! As though she should ever deign to think that she could be found attractive. Way to throw her a bone!

Fuck you.

You’re making it sound like there is a type for everybody, and there isn’t. People seem to think that the way you compliment a woman is to pit her against every other woman, like it’s a competition. He even has this whole schtick where he calls her a rose, “the queen of flowers”, when they’re first talking on the phone, but at the end of the movie, when she says she’s more like a sunflower, he agrees, calling roses “the bitchy supermodels of flowers”. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MY DUDE??? You don’t have to put down all other women to make the one you like feel better about herself!

The problem is not that the “roses” of our world are terrible people. They aren’t. The problem is that we don’t value the “sunflowers” for their beauty.

If we, as a culture, want to normalize body positivity and let women above a size six know that they can do anything, we have to stop casting fat women in fat-only roles. We have to stop making their story only about how fat they are. We have to stop talking about fatness as a thing that can be overcome, rather than a thing that should be celebrated just as much as thinness. We should see more fat women in all kinds of roles: the lover, the badass, the bitch, the heroine, the villain, the genius, the ingenue, the object of desire!

(Maybe not that last one, but only because no female character should be known only as the object of desire. But if the stereotype is gonna keep happening, let’s at least mix it up.)

Fat women are not only smart, talented, funny, and beautiful; they are also people, and they deserve to be represented as more than fat.

#fat #fat women #sierra burgess is a loser #sierra burgess is a problem #casting #women #opinion #review #movie review #netflix #fat is not an insult #fat is not a bad word #fat is good #shannon purser #noah centineo #rj cyler #kristine froseth

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